The devil's name was not given. Names, she had been taught, carried power. They anchored spirits, summoned memories, and gave shape to things that would rather remain formless. But he had broken the rule at first sight. He had looked her in the eyes and said, plainly and without hesitation, Lucien.
She wasn't sure if it was kindness or arrogance that made him give it. Made him trust her. Maybe both.
Seraphine followed him now, her bare feet aching from stone and thorn. Every breath burned as if the air was too sharp, too heavy with the grief of this land. The Vale, they called it. A cursed place. Yet her parents had watched the world throw her in it. The Vale devoured the light and whispered lies through the trees.
And how was it any different from Faedin?
But Lucien walked through it like he belonged here.
Like it belonged to him.
He didn't speak much as they traveled, though she must have asked him the same question a dozen times already. Each time, her voice carried more exhaustion than demand.
"What do you want from me?"
She didn't trust him. She couldn't. No one helped without a reason. Not in this world. And certainly not here.
But he had saved her.
Not just from death. From the heaviness that had followed her betrayal. From the ache of being thrown away. From the Vale. From the emptiness. She hated that she needed him, but she had no choice.
Lucien looked back once when she asked again, and this time he smiled. It was not a cruel smile. Nor kind. But it was honest. Honest in a way that made her spine tighten.
"Your soul. Your fury. And your promise to burn what needs burning."
The answer didn't surprise her anymore. It disturbed her less than it should have. Maybe that was the most frightening part.
"I was born to marry a lord," she murmured.
A bitter truth. Her life had been carved out before she learned to speak. Groomed to be pretty, polite, and pleasing. Promised like a jewel to a man who saw her more as a stepping stone than a partner. Her life had been sewn together with other people's ambitions.
Lucien's voice broke her reverie.
"Now you'll become a queen of flames or ash. Whichever one suits you."
He said it like it was obvious. Like it had already been decided. She didn't ask him what that meant. She didn't ask what kind of queen he was making her into. She had already agreed to be his bride, though the words had left her mouth before she understood the weight of them.
Still, she followed.
They passed a forest where the trees grew crooked and whispered to each other. The ground pulsed beneath her feet like it remembered every scream ever uttered in pain. Shadows moved where light should have been. Seraphine knew fear, but this place didn't frighten her. Not anymore. She had already lost everything.
She looked up at Lucien again. He did not seem tired. The Vale seemed to cradle him.
Was he betrayed too? Was that how he had ended up here?
Was he ever human?
She had heard stories, of course. Whispered by the folks. Tales of devils who walked the earth in beautiful bodies. Of werewolves. Of vampires. Creatures who fell in love and ruined the ones they chose. Men with smiles that promised everything and eyes that warned you to run. But Lucien didn't feel like a monster.
He felt like fury wrapped in flesh.
He felt like something she understood.
They came to a hollow carved into the earth, a place where the land had sunken and died. A spring had once lived here, she could tell. It must have been beautiful once. The kind of place you could imagine writing a song about. Now it was dry, cracked, and forgotten.
Lucien knelt beside it, one hand brushing the soil as if greeting an old friend.
Without warning, he drew a blade from his belt and sliced his palm open.
Seraphine flinched.
Thick black blood spilled from his hand, heavy as ink. It fell into the earth in slow drops, seeping into the soil like a pact long awaited. The ground drank it in greedily. She felt something shift in the air, as if the Vale itself had paused to breathe.
Lucien turned to her. His eyes burned, not like fire, but like a truth that hurt to hold.
"Swear it."
Her throat tightened. "To what?"
"To rise," he said, "not for love or name or crown, but for you."
He didn't reach for her hand. He didn't try to guide her. He simply waited. His blood still dripping, the air thick with anticipation. Seraphine looked down at the soil. At the black stain growing like roots. Her whole life had been shaped by duty. By failed promises. By being who she was told to be.
This was different.
This was hers.
She dropped to her knees. The ground was cold beneath her. Her hands hovered over his blood for a moment, then lowered slowly. She touched her fingers to the soil. It was warm. Alive.
And then she spoke.
"I swear."
The wind rose. Lightning cracked across the sky. The earth trembled.
And before her eyes, the spring came alive. Not with water, but with light. Deep violet light surged from the soil, swirling upward like flame made from stars. It reached for her, curling around her fingers, her arms, her heart. The air tasted like magic. Wild, almost familiar, but old.
Lucien didn't move. He watched her, face unreadable.
Seraphine closed her eyes.
She felt it then. The breaking. The becoming. Like a second heartbeat pulsing to life inside her. Pain, sharp and real, tore through her chest, but she didn't scream.
She rose.
When she opened her eyes again, the Vale looked different. The trees no longer loomed. The mist no longer clouded her thoughts. She saw paths where before there had only been confusion. She felt the ground like a pulse under her feet. And her magic, something she had never known she could possess again, stirred awake in her blood. But this was different from the magic she knew. Her magic had died a sudden death when she was thrown into the abyss, as they liked to call it.
She looked down at her hand. A faint glow flickered at her fingertips.
Lucien nodded, once. As if to say, it's done.
As if to say, welcome home.
They walked for a long time after that. Neither of them spoke. There was no need. Seraphine felt different. She had not forgotten the betrayal, but it no longer hurt in the same way. It had become fuel. It had become fire.
Eventually, they reached a ruin. Broken pillars rose from the earth like bones. Vines twisted up the stone, clutching at the past. This had once been a temple. Or a fortress. She couldn't tell. But she knew, somehow, that it would be hers.
Lucien stood at the edge of the ruin.
"This place belonged to someone once," he said, finally. "It will belong to you now."
Seraphine stared at him. "What am I meant to do?"
"Whatever you choose. Build. Burn. Reclaim your name. Or make a new one."
He looked at her then, really looked at her. "You died on that altar. This is the beginning."
She felt something shift inside her again. Not her newly found magic. Not rage.
Possibility.
She moved into the ruins slowly, touching the stone with her fingertips. It was cold, cracked, and full of ghosts. But it was also waiting. She could feel it. The same way the earth had waited at the spring. The way Lucien had waited for her to swear.
She turned back to him.
"Why me?"
Lucien's mouth curved into a half-smile. "Because you are not afraid to become something more than they made you."
She didn't know what that meant yet. But she believed him.
That night, Seraphine sat by the broken pillars, wrapped in silence. Her magic pulsed faintly beneath her skin, like a newborn heartbeat. She thought of the temple she would build. The flames she might call. The vengeance that waited beyond the veil of the Vale.
She thought of the man she almost married.
She thought of her parents.
She whispered their names into the night, unsure if it would carry. Unsure if the people she once loved like breath would even want to hear it.
Then she closed her eyes and slept for the first time in days, the shadows of the Vale and the sleepless nights before the wedding finally catching up to her.